A sweet-sounding moment
Max Tan ’15 came to Harvard from East Lyme, Conn., for his education, but he also came for this moment. It was announced in a phone call from Benjamin Zander, conductor and music director of the Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra (BPYO), who invited Tan to be the featured violin soloist during the group’s March 7 concert. “He asked me if I’d be willing,” recalled Tan, “and I was thinking, ‘You want me to do what?’” Though Tan has been a musician with the orchestra since his sophomore year, “My first thought was: ‘Anyone else in the orchestra can probably do a better job than me!’” For the concert, Zander said he chose “the sensuous and refined Barber Violin Concerto as the perfect foil for the tumultuous, overwhelming passion of the Mahler Fifth, which is the main work on the program. “Then I thought about whom amongst the famous violinists on the concert circuit I could...